What is Urgent Care?
Is it a miniature emergency room? What exactly does “urgent” mean? It’s only a sore throat, would they see me? But would my insurance cover it?
Why do urgent cares exist?
There is a lot of uncertainty around what exactly urgent cares are and what services they provide. Urgent care is one of the fastest-growing medical service providers in the United States as people are increasingly preferring other options to emergency rooms or to scheduling primary care appointments weeks in advance. In the past five years, the shortage of primary care providers coupled with overly impacted emergency rooms has driven a need for another solution - urgent care.
So what is an urgent care, really?
Urgent care clinics are medical centers equipped to diagnose and treat a wide range of non-life threatening illness and injuries. Urgent care clinics are uniquely positioned in the healthcare ecosystem, offering patients a midpoint option between the emergency room and primary care setting.
An urgent care provides convenient walk-in services and are perfect for those who have injury or illness that requires time-sensitive care but not life-threatening that do not warrant a trip to the emergency room. In fact, over 80% of emergency room visits can be treated at an urgent care, like bluedoor.
Being treated at urgent care versus the emergency room can make a significant difference in the time and money spent receiving care. Read more about when to go to urgent care versus the ER here.
Patients prefer urgent care clinics for their convenience, affordability and accessibility. Insurance providers are now even incentivizing the use of local urgent cares to help drive costs down.
The rise in urgent care clinics across America is not only beneficial to the individual seeking treatment but also to overrun emergency rooms. Most emergency rooms are operating over capacity and aren’t able to adequately treat the large number of injured/ ill persons coming through their doors. The Urgent Care Association reports that hospital visits were reduced by 30% in communities with local surrounding urgent care clinics (UCA, 2014).
The big benefits of urgent care
The main benefits of urgent care centers are:
Reduced stress on overcrowded emergency rooms
Improved healthcare costs for both individuals and insurers
Better local accessibility and efficiency
The cost of being treated in the emergency room can be over 10x higher for the same diagnosis and treatment in an urgent care clinic (UCA, 2018). Whether you are insured or not, patients who visit urgent care, rather than emergency rooms, typically have fewer out of pocket costs and little to no copayments.
Not only are urgent care clinics more affordable, they will also save you time. Wait times at an urgent care can be less than one third of the time spent waiting to see a provider in the ER. This is due to the fact that emergency rooms operate by treating the most critical, life threatening injuries first, thus resulting in longer wait times for patients with non-life threatening medical situations. And unlike primary care providers, most urgent care clinics operate on a walk-in basis, so no waiting weeks to see your doctor.
Urgent care clinics hold great value to the communities they serve. When living in a city or even a moderately populated area, it is likely there is an urgent care within a few miles. And since most urgent care clinics are much smaller than a hospital, they are able to tailor their practices to the specific needs of their communities.
Where urgent cares fall short
Since urgent cares were developed as an affordable alternative to hospital visits, their purpose is simple: treat presenting symptoms. But the human body is not a machine, and where urgent cares and hospitals often fall short for their patients is in identifying root triggers and patterns that create physical ailments. Urgent care centers were built to treat, not necessarily to heal or to support long term health. The urgent care solution is great for decreasing the load of overcrowded hospitals but is still lacking the long term care options provided in a primary or speciality care setting.
The future of urgent care
The demand for urgent care in the US is trending up. Younger generations are turning to urgent care as an alternative to paying high monthly insurance costs accompanied by additional unexpected costs; and are utilizing urgent care clinics as their primary care provider.
As they grow, it is important that urgent care clinics continue to provide the same reliable services as well as new ones that are needed by their community. They have the ability to establish long term relationships and care plans with their patients which creates a unique opportunity for urgent cares to play a more active role in their patients’ - and communities’ - long term health.
Urgent care clinics are now in a unique position to change the trajectory of younger and aging American’s health. When preventative care is taken seriously, urgent care clinics can work to eliminate over 75% of individual healthcare costs and prevent over 100,000 deaths per year that occur due to chronic illness (Institute Of Medicine, 2010).
The Bluedoor approach to urgent care
We are excited by the opportunity for urgent care in the American healthcare system, and want to make positive incremental steps in the direction of true health. What that means tactically, is that our practice is focused around curating therapies that are designed to make you feel better, whatever stage of your health journey you’re in.
We interrogate everything about the urgent care experience but take it even a step further. We will continue to provide the same reliable, affordable, accessible urgent care services to our community. But, we will do this while adding in additional things such as eastern and holistic therapies, simpler communication, better in office experiences, and more.
Read more about Bluedoor’s approach to healthcare here.
